1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a file management system and a management method therefor, and more particularly to a method for specifying a file of a file system which stores files constituted in a tree structure. The file management system and management method of the present invention are suitable for the case where a plurality of work stations share object programs or the case where an object program in a certain work station is distributed to other work stations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A file system management method for managing files in a tree structure is discussed e.g. in Communications of ACM, Vol. 17, No. 7 (July 1974), pp 365-375.
FIGS. 5A and 5B indicate the conception of an example of the prior art tree structure file system management method. In FIG. 5A a file system 1 has a tree structure, in which "/" represents the root of the tree; obj, lib and src are branches of the tree; and comp, asm, link, trans, f1 and f2 are leaves of the tree. "/", obj, lib and src, which are not leaves, are called directories, and the absolute path from "1", which is the root of the tree, to one of the files, which are the leaves of the tree, is defined unequivocally by specifying successively a directory for every rank. For example the file comp within the file system 1 can be represented by /obj/comp, "/" being the symbol indicating a delimiter between two adjacent ranks.
Consider now a case where the file f1 is compiled, the file comp being the compiler. The user executes an object program, which is the content of the file comp, and starts the compiler, using the file f1 as an argument. The file comp executes the file trans and translates the source to the assembly language, transfers the result thus obtained to the files asm and link, and effects the assembly and the link. In this case the object program stored in the file comp uses an absolute path name on the tree structure such as execute ("/lib/trans"), execute ("/obj/asm"), execute ("/obj/link"), etc., as indicated by 2a in FIG. 5B, in order to specify the files "trans", "asm" and "link" in the file system 1. Consequently, in the case where data in a certain file is referred to or a program is started from a program in another file, they should be specified by using an absolute path name from the root in the tree structure, in which there exists the file, which is to be referred to or started however, this gives rise to a problem that the specified file should be located on a fixed path within the file system, i.e. under a specified directory.